The Servant
by Desdemona Kakalose
Summary: Recruited by the early Decepticon movement, Rung finds himself in the middle of the nascent power struggle between Megatron and his infamous first lieutenant. In war time, with civilization steadily unravelling around them all, who would dare to speak of love? We all know how this opera ends. Rung/Megatron, Rung/Starscream


Okay this is actually from a series on AO3, but I saw an opportunity to condense a series into a single fic and I'm gonna run with it.

* * *

1\. The Past; or, The Servant Has No Ambition

An Observation on the Tragedy of Omega Prime

An essay attributed to Megatron of Tarn

In the classic tragedy of _Omega Prime_, that amorphous political mirror, there is one minor character that never ceases to fascinate me. He speaks eight lines; in every known transcription, he is credited only as "Servant". On days like these, when the shell above the rust-infested core of this so-called republic shines with the spit polish of countless million mechs, I am reminded of the Servant. In my mind I have already cast him in the sun-bright colors of today's unrest.

_Omega Prime_ has survived the regimes of era after era by being coy and fanged in turns. The tragedy is of Cybertron's someday-final Prime, twisted by his obsession with his own power—once the great hope of his people, at last reduced to a maddened shadow of himself. Around him, his generals and sycophants cannibalize each other, feeding from the tainted dregs of his authority. They think they know how the story will end. They are wrong, of course.

The play survives uneasily in these times by disguising itself as a stab against autocracy, but it is not about _autocracy_. It is about power, and it is about corrupt systems, and it is about systematized injustice. When Omega, with his secret police and his grandiose delusions, at last turns his knife on the one true friend left to him in his court, his generals indulge him. They crowd each other, delighted with the exercise of power, lost in their political machinations. They have their own long term plans.

The Servant has no such ambitions. He has no notion of how the play should end, or how the regime will fall. All he understands is the scene before him: an injustice that he cannot stand by and witness. He sees Brighteye in the grip of the guards, moments away from undergoing the fatal shadowplay. A functioning being is about to be taken and re-written like an unsatisfactory polemic before the board of censorship. The servant will not stand for it. His gun is at his master's spark in a moment—then the sycophantic Breakwave stabs him through the back. That is the whole of his part in the play. Resistance; death.

In a play such a thing is nothing. But in reality, it is the only thing that matters. You must act, regardless of whether you believe you will make a difference. If each of us only held our ground at the sight of injustice, the senate itself would shake.

In a bar somewhere, a small frame, delicate even—a nothing and a no one—stands with his jaw set. Towering above him: self satisfied brutes, the hounds of the functionists. There is light, clear as triplegrade, pouring past him. He will not heel, no matter how they crack their servos and leer at him.

There is nothing that enrages the stupid and cruel quite like the audacity of the weak to maintain their pride. In that moment, he could kneel for them. Many would. Many break to the whip of their oppressors, because they know nothing else. Public humiliation is such a small thing in contrast to corporal punishment. My mistake was in assuming that I, too, knew how the scene would play. I barely listened, assured of my disgust and satisfied with my own plans, and that is why I did not hear the final _no._

He hits the wall in a splash of energon and a crash of glass. That is how the play has to end. Make no mistake, there will never be another outcome with the odds stacked as they are. And yet, if one unarmed no one could bear to stand his ground—if he who had nothing to fight with could set his jaw against the jeering of the world—how much more do we owe, who have everything to fight with?

Outnumbered and outclassed, he does the one thing that cannot be forgiven: he insists on his dignity. Since that day, I have thought often of his face, blank and splattered with spilled drink, his systems creaking and popping with the aftermath of violence.

That was the part best acted.

* * *

2\. The Present; or, The Snap of the Spring

Starscream lounged on the table of his workshop, one leg crossed over the other, scrolling through his own notes. Megatron had been prodding at blaster prototypes for most of the conversation, and had irritatingly failed thus far to notice that Starscream was being Aloof and Unimpressed with his leader. The prototype wasn't even that interesting, whereas Starscream himself could have Megatron's fuel pump ripped out and smashed on the table with only a minimum of effort right now, if he took the notion. He was still considering it.

"Triticalium," Starscream said, flicking through the data with one claw tip, "several tons of it, actually."

At that, Megatron actually looked at him for the first time in several minutes, which was gratifying in a way that left a bitter aftertaste all the same. Starscream did _not_ appreciate being tuned out, especially not in his own workshop.

Megatron set down the blaster he'd been examining, "Several _tons,_ Commander?"

Starscream smiled, optics narrowed, letting the bitter edge surface in the corners of his mouth. "If you'd give me decent materials to work with, I'd need less. As it stands, the reinforcements alone—"

Megatron abruptly held up a servo and cut his commander off.

Starscream stopped speaking more out of shock than out of any respect for the gesture. And then, all at once, rage boiled over his processor. "Excuse _you,"_ he started, only to find Megatron had physically twisted away from him, a servo to his comm array, head cocked the way he did when someone who wasn't Soundwave pinged him with full vocals.

"He's _here?_" Megatron said, stiffening.

"_Who's_ here?" Starscream demanded, on the tips of his thrusters trying to lean over Megatron's shoulder.

"No," Megatron said into the com, and pushed Starscream away with a hard jab that nearly over-ended him. Starscream stumbled backwards, thrusters gouging the floor.

"-No, I'll be right there. No. I want to see to it personally. And I want all of you lot to watch your mouths around him, this is a delicate situation and I'll have the spark of anyone who bungles it for us."

Starscream steadied himself with one servo against the floor, knee bent, and paused. An arms negotiation? But as second in command, surely Starscream would have gotten word that such a deal was in the works. Things like that don't just _happen _without his knowing. He'd always been careful to keep his finger on the fuel pump, politically speaking, even before he was named Second. It _could_ be something he hadn't heard about, but he generally knew where Megatron was and what he was doing about 90% of the time, and he'd be _very _surprised, not to mention annoyed, if something so large had slipped through the cracks.

A new recruit? It had been a long time since Megatron met with new recruits in person—those heady, breathless days were long behind. Even _Starscream_, Air Commander and newly appointed First Officer, hadn't been received by the mech himself when _he_ joined up. Soundwave had been _his_ liaison, well into the process. It had taken sweat and favors and sheer audacity to get himself to the point where the Scourge of Kaon had taken a second look at him.

Flight frame, too light for the style of brawling that gained gladiatorial types their favor; not a senator like Shockwave, or anybody worth knowing really. Maybe he was just a back alley arms dealer and a two bit street hustler, but he'd toppled his fair share of fresh faces in the rising ranks all the same, and he'd climbed their backs to the top of that shining ladder where the burning spark of the movement waited for him.

And—here he was. At long last.

"Starscream, you're dismissed," Megatron said, and set off for the exit without waiting for an answer.

"So I'll just put in the requisition for the triticalium?" Starscream shouted at the door, which had already slid shut behind Megatron. He pulled the datapad close against his chassis, scowled at the door, and jabbed the _submit_ on his requisition form. He took a minimal amount of joy in the amount of credits he was about to cost his leader. It seemed like he had to push harder and harder these days just to get a moment of undivided attention. The trouble was that if he pushed _too _hard, the backlash tended to be more attention than he could actually handle, and most of it… with a hard servo.

Presumptuous old tyrant! Starscream ruffled his wings, and then set off after his boss at a swift pace. Who _was_ this oh so very important visitor, clearly more important to Megatron than doing his primus-forsaken _job?_

He stalked through the halls, shadowing the path he assumed Megatron would have taken down to the docking bay, rather than following the general himself. Lately he was feeling—_antsy_. Looking over his shoulder a lot, back-hacking the private logs of the command chain, that sort of thing. More than usual, anyway. He had sweet-talked and backstabbed his way this far, but now that he was here, it…

He didn't recharge as well anymore. That's all.

At the bay doors, Starscream pressed against the wall and slunk over to the edge of the entrance. He couldn't hear anything but the usual whirr of equipment. He poked his head around.

A skinny orange bot, almost certainly scientific class, barely taller than Megatron's hip, stood in the middle of the hangar. That wasn't at all what Starscream was expecting. Some kind of two-wheeler? It was hard to tell from here. A _delicate_ thing, with an expressive little face pulled into a kind of wary firmness. Megatron engulfed the bot's one tiny servo in two of his own, proprietary and possessive. The bot accepted his grip; he didn't seem fazed by the size of the thing gripping him.

The iron of the hangar door dented under Starscream's fingers with a faint metallic noise of protest.

The skinny bot looked up. His gaze traveled across the hangar, optics flashing, and leveled his attention directly at Starscream.

Starscream whipped around, back pressed flat to the wall, and then he made a break for it.

* * *

My Dear Doctor,

I find your modesty a persistently charming irritant. You must understand what I say when I tell you that there will _always _be a place at my side for anyone with your combination of competency and unflinching resolve. Anyone would consider you a prize if they had half the intellect of a sack of rocks. That fact that Cybertron so consistently fails in recognizing this only strengthens my resolve to win your loyalty by whatever means necessary. You would not regret coming to work for me; although we are but humble now, we will soon outstrip the glory of any so-called golden age. I do not think you are a mech of material desires-your thirst, like mine, is for the substance of change, for the labors of your own servo…

My Dear Doctor,

You may say that you are content to let history malign you and the scavengers plagiarize you, but I think we both know you have been ill-treated for the work which you do at great cost to your own health. Yes, I have looked into your history. I am curious to know how you bear such disrespect with such grace...

My Dear Doctor,

I hope this message finds you in good health. What news of Rodion do you have for me this cycle? Lately I have been making my home in the ruins of another great glass city, and I find my thoughts often turning to you. When you said you would consider lending aid to a movement that better aligned with your own morals, I wonder if you meant to imply that a patient who agrees with your ethics is somehow more valuable than a patient who does not? I should think that all the ill are equally important in the eyes of a doctor…

My Dear Rung,

The stars here are beautiful. Of course I cannot tell you where I am-although these letters are precarious enough when taken as a whole, I bend to Soundwave's insistence that no _single _letter should be too damning on its own-but I will tell you that the sky is as thick with stellar light here as if a goldsmith had thrown the dust of his forge across the workshop floor. I think perhaps all this running and hiding in the dark and the ruins is nearly at its end. I wish you could have heard the cheering in the mines, when we took them. Starscream should have been born a prince, the way he burns adulation like fuel...

Rung,

I think you will forgive me if I admit that it has been a very long day here aboard this ship. In your last letter you remarked that Luna 2 was waxing into vernal equinox. I can imagine this vividly. Rodion pink beneath the full moon-the view from your office, which you have described to me with such care-your gaze silently unfolding all its ugliness to reveal something beautiful. I should not like you to think of me as a mech who has no desires of his own, for as much as I have wished you here with me and mine, tonight I am distracted by a strange longing to be there with you.

* * *

When Rung had stepped down into the loading docks in Kaon yesterday, he almost expected to be turned away, and he almost had been.

"Ain't you with the tower bots?" one of the nosier crew members had asked, while the captain authenticated the code that Rung had kept tucked away inside himself for the better part of two solar cycles. "Little thing like you," the crew member had said, "what're you doin' on this side of the planet?"

That _was_ about what Rung had expected. He had the unfortunate lot in life of being a nobody to the somebodies, and an unwelcome interloper to the rest. But eventually the code had validated, and they'd let him onto the scrapper, and then it was all over but the long ride out into contested space.

He still wasn't entirely sure of this decision. Megatron's message sat in his memory banks like a hot iron in a scrapheap, threatening to engulf everything around it in fire. _If you ever change your mind_, it said, the same as the last time he checked it. It had been passed to him on a worryingly scorched datadrive, which he had long ago disposed of.

At times he wished that he had left that first pamphlet in the street where he found it, unopened, unremarkable. But he hadn't. He'd opened those words with his hungry fingers and found a portrait of himself looking back up at him, someone rendered simultaneously graceful and frightening by the pen of a poet. His spark still shuddered at the memory—how hard his fuel pump had thumped inside his chassis, how the whisper of charge had jumped down his spinal strut.

Curiosity crushed the turbo fox; he went looking for the circle that had produced the drive, and eventually he found it. The old one-eyed bulldozer observing the ragtag rally from the backmost seat had taken one look at Rung, and he had understood.

"You'd be that guy from the _Omega Prime_ bit, eh?" he'd said.

Elsewhere in the room a heavy-set bot pounded the chalkboard with his fist, shouting over his cohort.

"Possibly," Rung said. "My memory of the incident is somewhat battered."

There was a clunk and a scramble as several smaller bots toppled the first one and pried the chalk out of his servo, shouting something about the _manifesto._

The bulldozer ignored them. He tilted his head, set down the broken drive he'd been slowly piecing back together with his cumbersome claws, and reached for a ream of hardcopies across the desk. The building itself appeared to be a forgotten educational center, long left to languish in disrepair. The cracked blackboard was a jumble of words in various handwritings, arguments scribbled over arguments.

"Com this frequency," the bulldozer had said, pushing a scrap of hardcopy into Rung's servos. "Tell 'em who you are. I got a feeling somebody up there wants to talk to you."

He hadn't. Not right away. He'd gone back to work with the scrap tucked deep inside his compartments, receiving patients and issuing diagnoses like usual, and at strange moments he'd watched his servos opening and closing over his stationary and he had wondered _is this the body that captivated a revolutionary?_

It was the middle of the night cycle when he broke down at last and made the call. The reply came back like they'd been _waiting _for him, a neat little private frequency with the return address to an off-web inbox.

He'd closed out the program and paced and come back to it, and _still_, undeniably, it was what it had appeared to be. A letter from Megatron's personal address. Short—brief and abrupt, and yet—

_It would be the crowning jewel of this humble movement if you would consider lending us your talents, doctor. We are always hungry for mechs of integrity and honor, for strength of spark like I have rarely seen before encountering you._

As he had read that, Rung bit the joints of his servo, almost afraid to hold the message too close to himself. Flattery was pointless, flattery was—it was—

But it had been such a _long_ time since anyone had bothered to even try flattering him. Megatron and he hadn't even _spoken_. They had hardly spent a fraction of a cycle in the same space. Had Megatron looked him up afterward? Even after—after the whole business with the prison guard, the long imprisonment? Had he _sent_ someone to look into Rung?

He'd replied to the message. _Thank you but no thank you_, he'd said, _I respect your vision but I cannot condone your methods. _He'd like to say that had been the end of it.

It hadn't been, of course.

Because he couldn't stop _replying_ to things. Megatron asked him what he meant by _methods_. Megatron invited him to debate the necessity of tyranny. Megatron asked his opinion on the aria of an opera from several centuries before.

Rung was being _courted_, he was almost certain of it. It didn't escape him how rare and fraught it was to receive a single personal communication from the leader of the entire Decepticon movement, let alone a series of them. There he was, in his office overlooking the Boulevard of Swords, flipping through his datebook, with an unread letter from _Megatron _of_ Tarn_ sitting in the back of his queue.

And the trouble was that it was _working_.

Because as soon as Rung would say, _if you dissemble the structure of power with violence, only chaos will remain_, Megatron would say, _Chaos is an unfortunate but necessary primal state; all stars are born of nebula._

Rung would say, _even if your argument is only rhetorical, a significant portion of your audience will take you at your word_, and Megatron would say, _then I will need a strong right servo to keep the course, won't I?_

In the hangar of the Nemesis, countless illicit correspondences later, Megatron received Rung with his arms open, a smile threatening to curve his mouth. His bearing was gravitational, somehow stronger in person than his wanted posters made it out to be. In Maccadam's that day, Rung had barely perceived him except for a grand shadow in a back corner booth, a cool spot in the bustle. The hangar now was oddly empty of bustle, but then again, the place had begun to quietly empty itself the moment Megatron set foot on the deck.

"I was beginning to think you would never come," he admitted, his optics glinting with something secret and warm. "What changed your mind?"

A cold ache bloomed at the bottom of Rung's spark. Rodion, abruptly, seemed as lost to him as an extinguished friend.

"You were right about what was coming," he said. "I—the government isn't interested in reform. They've rolled out austerity measures, and with the clampdown in place for so long… the feeling on the surface is grim. People are disappearing." He reset his vocoder. "They took my practice."

Megatron's brow ridge lifted the barest amount. "On what grounds?"

Empty-eyed windows watched him from the files of his memory. It hadn't taken long to gather his things from the office. There wasn't much to take. Almost half his life was packed inside himself now, in his own Byzantine compartments.

Rung dug his digits into his faceplate, into the aching place between his eyebrows. "Apparently someone reported me as a sympathizer," he said. "With what evidence I have no idea. I treat several patients with sympathetic leanings but—"

Rung steadied himself, lifting his chin with a deep in-vent. "The truth is," he said, "I have nowhere else to go. I thought perhaps you meant it when you said…"

"Of _course_," Megatron purred, and took Rung's servo between his own.

For a moment, all Rung could feel was the sweet rush of relief. Megatron's servos were warm and broad, and being held so firmly by them was a strange comfort after the brittle perseverance of the last few days, the dark looks and the naked suspicion of nearly everyone he had encountered.

"Thank you," he breathed.

There came a shrill little sound—Rung stiffened and scoured the hangar for its source, glancing past several empty transports to rest finally on the door to the interior ship. Someone was standing there, optics blazing, watching him. Their claws had left visible grooves in the metal.

"Who—" he said, even as the figure disappeared entirely, leaving only scored metal behind.

"That would be Starscream, I expect," Megatron said. "I left him in the middle of one of his little snits, and he does so hate to be ignored. Don't worry about him, I'll straighten him out."

Starscream. Megatron talked often of Starscream—_the Decepticon __ideal_, he had called the mech once, during some lingering late night talk of pre-destiny and ambition. Rung's mind raced, connecting dots, but what he said was only, "If you insist."

"I certainly do," Megatron said, and only then let go of Rung's servo. "As it happens, you've come at an ideal time. I have just the job opening for you."

Rung sighed in relief. "Certainly," he said. "What is it? Administrative? I have excellent organizational skills."

"As a matter of fact," Megatron said, pressing a firm servo to Rung's back, "I'd like to make you CMO."

Stunned, Rung barely noticed that he was being gently herded towards the door.

"Megatron," he sputtered, "you _know_ I'm not that kind of—and surely you must have a more qualified practitioner to—"

Rung _did_ have a medical degree, of course. When he'd begun practicing psychiatry there had been no real course of study for it, only a lot of scattered research papers by medical students all seeming to approach the problem of the mind from disorganized angles. He certainly had _access_to general medical downloads through his alma mater, although if they pulled his license along with his practice that might not last long.

"To be frank," Megatron said, "doctor, we have a dire shortage of medical professionals within our ranks. We have several construction class bots who have been working as back alley hacksaws, some nurses, and quite a few disposable classers who worked at one point or another in a hospital of some kind, but we have almost _no one_ with any real qualification."

"None?" Rung said, horrified.

Megatron's optics blazed. "The few medical professionals who haven't proved spineless functionist lackeys have either been detained or… _dealt_with, by the powers that be. You—" He leveled his gaze at Rung, "are the first to have escaped."

"Oh," Rung said. He ran the math. Even at its smallest estimates, an organization of this size—

"More will come, I think. But regardless of who may or may not join us, I have faith in _you. _In _your_ abilities." Megatron squeezed his shoulder. "I want you to take the position."

"I—" but Rung was already cutting several auxiliary mental processes and beginning to unzip his old medical downloads, reintegrating them into his diagnostic protocols. "Everything I have will be sorely out of date," he warned. "And basic. I'll try to rip as much from the Nova Point server as I can before I'm ejected, but it still won't be enough to make me a real physician."

"Your presence here is already the difference between life and death for many of us."

Rung cut his optic feed. Whatever processor power he had that wasn't currently being used to scrape data from his long term archives went into furiously ordering a plan of implementation. He would need to distribute the data packets to everyone, ensure that they were fully integrated, and start weeding the experienced from the inexperienced before standards and practices could become too muddied. He was grateful for the servo against his back—he leant into it and allowed Megatron to direct him wherever they were going, trusting that the bigger mech would take care of things while Rung was otherwise preoccupied.

"I'll need to meet the staff," Rung said, his own voice sounding far away to him. "The first priority is pooling our resources, and then establishing a chain of command."

There was a tug against Rung's body as Megatron tucked him against his side, guiding him down unseen halls. Rung leaned gratefully into it.

"Of course," Megatron said. "Let me give you the tour."

[x]

For several weeks, Starscream observed as Rung made himself right at home in the Decepticon militia. As if he wasn't some soft-fingered tower mech, with his fancy laboratory alt—whatever the hell it was—and his cultured little accent and his shiny-bright spark absolutely _glittering_ behind that display case of a spark chamber, like he _wanted_ you to touch it.

Starscream wouldn't trust Primus himself if the old glitch climbed right out of the well of sparks and started handing out alt-exemptions, and he _certainly_ didn't trust this delicate little headshrink who touched down out of the blue one day and named himself CMO.

_Look_ at him, wandering around the ship with his spark practically out. It was inappropriate for the fragging workplace was what it was. Did no one else notice this? Was he the only sane mech in this army?

If there was one thing Starscream couldn't stand, it was being out of the loop.

Megatron's appointments book was a garbled mess, and Starscream despaired of it. Their glorious leader ran the thing himself these days, ostensibly because they couldn't spare the manpower for luxuries like personal _secretaries_. Down in the bitter place below his glossa, below his spark, Starscream didn't believe a word of it. In the early days he had been Megatron's secretary as well as his engineer, his strategist, and his—

Well, he was still all of those things, except he didn't have access to the appointment book anymore. Officially. Obviously he left himself a back door into the log, he wasn't a _newspark_, but he was fully aware that having his access privileges revoked had been _meant_ to keep him out.

Anyway. The point of it was, there just happened to be a suspicious chunk of today's planner simply labeled _Rung_, and that was not going to fly. Whatever the hell Rung had that Megatron wanted, Starscream was determined that he should know about it too. And possibly slide it into his own pocket, if he could.

Starscream tracked Megatron's signal to a conference room at the far end of the ship, at which point the system informed him that the chamber had been locked from the inside. Starscream grimaced at the notification. Not to worry! What kind of SIC would he be if he didn't have a master system override in his toolbox? He keyed in the code and fetched a pad from his subspace, arranged his features to look bland and harried, and leaned through the door as it opened.

"My lord," he started, only _then_ flicking his eyes up from the pad, "did you have—"

The pad slipped out of his servo and clattered to the floor.

Despite the fact that his dripping valve was on open display, Rung only seemed mildly taken aback to find Starscream there, standing in the doorway. With one leg hooked over Megatron's shoulder, he settled back on his palms as Megatron stiffened in almost palpable rage.

Rung lifted an eyebrow. Deliberately, without turning, Megatron wiped his mouth with the back of his servo.

In that moment Starscream was absolutely certain that if Megatron turned his head someone was going to die, and Starscream did not like his own odds.

"Whoops sorry about that carry on I'll just be—" Starscream slammed the door button, "—out here, literally anywhere else, thanks, bye!"

Cold condensation breaking out all over the back of his neck, Starscream set off down the corridor at a brisk pace. The exact angle of Rung's slanted shoulder was burned into his optics; the blue of his spark chamber, the glittering trail of lubricant that strung from his valve to Megatron's servo. That skinny little spawn of a glitch! Who the pit did he think he was?

[x]

Starscream buried himself in research that shift block. He burned through several favors, back hacked Soundwave's personnel files, and piggybacked a crawler through someone's non-regulation entertainment stream just to get back into the Cybertron intraplanetary web. What he found was simultaneously underwhelming and disorienting, an unintelligible mess of data. Rung was_ no one_, and he was _everywhere._ Records of him went back as far as records even existed, and they were completely useless.

It wasn't until he drifted back through a more recent security footage dump that the first meaningful clue unearthed itself. Starscream absently sipped a cube of half-congealed fuel as he tabbed back and forth through a series of visitations from a couple thousand years before. Hm.

Hmm.

On the 'con subnet, he found some chatter connecting a psychiatrist who had been hanging around meets in Iacon to the mystery mech from the _Servant Pamphlet. _It certainly sounded like they were describing Rung, although not one of them could seem to get his name right.

Starscream paused at that. Somebody was _always_ trying to find the illusive Servant, just like they were always trawling around trying to find out who Terminus had been, or how big Megatron's spike was. On the other servo… Starscream flicked back through the old distributive material until he found the passage in question. It was pretty dry on detail. No paint color, no alt mode, and certainly no name.

Starscream flicked through it again. Well Rung certainly seemed _small_ enough to get tossed around, although why functionist lackeys would treat a scientific class bot like that was an even more irksome mystery. By the time the morning shift had come and gone, Starscream was nothing but nerves and grinding denta as he slammed his datapad into a drawer in his newly assigned officer's quarters.

The fact that no one had so much as commed him about his earlier indiscretion made his plating itch. Either Megatron was waiting for his most vulnerable moment to drop retribution on him, or the slagger didn't even _care._

Starscream whirled, kicked the berth, and slapped his comm array to life.

"_What the pit do you want?"_

"Skywarp," he said, "I need you to cover for me on the bridge. I've got something to _deal_ with."

"_Starscream you slag sucker, I just got _off_ shift—"_

"Great," Starscream said, and cut the call.

He was going to get to the bottom of this or chip a claw trying.

[x]

The CMO quarters were the only officer's rooms not located on the bridge-adjacent hall. As a matter of fact, they were attached to the medical suite, with an office connecting the private rooms to the medbay. Starscream fed the same master override as before through the lock and let himself inside.

Rung looked up. He was perched on the berth, one leg tucked underneath him, reviewing something on a 'pad with his ridiculous spectacles folded up on the desk behind him. "Ah," he said.

He was so _small._ Not in the way that a minibot was small, but in the way that an expensive thing was small, in the way that crystal stemware and high end tech were small. He was slim, unarmed, nothing but essentials. Starscream could snap him in half without even engaging auxiliary systems. How would that look, Starscream considered_—_could he make it look like an accident?

He could always frame someone else for it. Two ships, one plasma round.

"_So_," he said, slipping into the room, "do you frag all your bosses, or only the ones who'll let you ride their canon?"

Rung turned off the datapad and set it down gently at his side. "Hello Starscream," he said. "I think we _are_ overdue for a talk. Please come in."

Starscream sneered at him. The door slid closed with a telling hiss.

Rung's room was more lively than most of the rooms on the Nemesis, by a small degree. There was a small light cascade cast on the far wall, throwing up shades of sea foam and arctic ice. He had set out several model spaceships on the bare shelving unit, the collection still smelling faintly of glue. Out of place among the shiny miniature hulls was some kind of folded hardcopy, its whisper-thin edges crimped into the shape of a glider, or maybe a jet.

Starscream plucked it from the shelf. "What's this?" he said, examining the thing between his clawtips. "It seems awfully _delicate_. You should be careful with delicate things in a place like this, my dear. They have a tendency to _break._"

"It was a gift from a patient," Rung said. His voice was mild. "We used to fold those to ground his nervous energy. He could make more complicated models than that, but I asked for this one. I like that it can fly."

Starscream rolled the thing in his fingers. No self propulsion that he could see. It was just hardcopy, flimsy and pink.

"You know, anyone in my position would find your sudden appearance a bit _suspect_," Starscream said. "I did a little research on you… did a bit of poking around… you made an _awful_ lot of visits to the functionist center a few thousand years ago. Enough to make a certain type of mind wonder where your loyalties really lie. It's awfully convenient that someone like _you_ would want to throw your lot in with the likes of _us._ You're stepping down a bit in the world._"_

"You think I'm a plant," Rung said, with a frown.

"I _thought_ that, for a little while," Starscream admitted. He tugged the wing of the little flight model. "But then I got to thinking about that _pamphlet_—yes, I thought you might know about that—and it occurred to me that I may be giving you too much credit. Megatron went after _you,_ didn't he? I can smell an infatuation at twenty paces."

For the first time in the conversation, Rung looked discomfited. He shifted, sitting forward, servos folding in his lap.

"I _thought_ so!" Starscream said, baring his denta. "Haha! And I bet I know why. All those revolving door visits to the functionist centers—Megatron always wants whatever his enemies have, the greedy old slagger." Starscream pointed a finger lazily at Rung. "He got you _pre-used, _didn't he. Really, I wouldn't have thought he was the type to be that petty, but I guess you're a bit of a bargain. Two whole bonus functions for the price of one frag."

Rung climbed carefully to his feet. For a moment Starscream tensed, ready to take on whatever the hell that tiny package could dish out, but Rung made no move to charge him. Instead, he only picked his way across the floor, and when he had come up chassis to chassis with Starscream, he gently pried the flimsy flight model out of the jet's grip.

"I'm not a toy, you know," Rung said.

Starscream looked up from the model, and lifted a brow ridge. "Aren't you?" he said. "A sweet little party toy for senators and councilmech? Basically part of the _furnishings_."

"Not, I think, that it really matters," Rung said, "but that's not quite how it went. If you want to know what happened to me, I don't mind telling you."

Starscream paused. He couldn't get a read on Rung one way or another—it didn't _feel_ like he was lying, but then, why would he bother telling his rival the truth? Starscream didn't even have a metaphorical gun to the bot's head. Starscream didn't have _anything_, and that was the reason his tanks felt like they were corroding into his internals. He didn't have _anything_, and Rung had _everything._

Rung only came up to his collar faring, but he didn't move as if he was outsized. He reached past Starscream, setting the model down in its place, so close that his chest plate all but scuffed Starscream's arm. His servo barely brushed Starscream's hip as he balanced himself, and then he pulled back. Starscream stood as stiff as iron rebar.

"A few thousand years ago, when everyone was required to be classed officially for the census," Rung said, "I discovered the hard way that I may in fact be the functionist council's least favorite person ever forged. I was in and out of that place so many times because they were performing _tests_on me. I think I am personally responsible for setting back the census by at least a half century."

The wheels—? Starscream looked Rung over again, with newly analytical eyes. He had assumed that glass panel became some kind of lens, maybe for a microscope. But why would a microscope have wheels?

Rung reached into his subspace and rummaged out a little ID card. He flipped it over with a mirthless smile and flashed the block print reading: _ornament._

"I'm not a toy," he said again, and against the stark wording of the card there couldn't have been a more loaded sentence.

He flipped the card back around, regarding it thoughtfully.

"Which isn't to say," he concluded, "that I didn't have a few intimately unpleasant experiences while I was up there. But that is neither here nor there. If Megatron knows anything about it, it's not because I told him. He's certainly never asked. The fact of the matter is, you're the first person besides my conference partner to wonder about it."

Starscream worked his jaw mutely. If this wasn't about stealing trophies from functionist pricks, then what _could_ it be about? Surely not _sentiment, _not with _Megatron._

"When you say _intimately unpleasant_—" Starscream started, before he could think better of it.

Rung tapped the card back into his subspace. "You know how it is," he said. "For some people it's not enough that you say _yes sir_, they want you to kneel while you're doing it."

For the first time since Rung showed up in the hangar, all sleek and bright and sharp-eyed, Starscream was struck hard by an echo of the grim resolve that had once inspired a love letter disguised as a polemic. His mouth curled down. His fuel pump lurched.

"I'm not a threat to your position here," Rung went on, as if that was a normal thing to say without preamble. "I'm not staying forever. I'd like to get the medical staff trained up to the best of my ability, and then of course I'll be available to take patients if any of your people are having trouble coping with the stress of the political climate. But I've never agreed with Decepticon methods, and I can't in good conscience take the brand while you continue to consider _assassination _a viable method of political activism."

Starscream stood absolutely silent for a moment too long. Then he clapped a servo to his mouth, muffling a dry rasp of laughter.

"My _dear_ doctor," he said, "do you really think he'll ever let you leave now that you're here?"

A flicker of something almost wary passed over Rung's expressive faceplate. "I have nothing to hold hostage," he said.

"Except your life, except your _body_," Starscream countered.

Rung favored him with a wry half smile. "Oh, is that all?"

Starscream's plating flared, venting furious steam. "You naïve little fool, do you think you're just going to get up and walk out of here in one piece?"

Rung turned away from him and went back to the berth, letting a servo rest on its edge lightly. "Is that naïve?" The servo lifted, curling towards his chassis. "I've been nothing but honest with him from the start."

"Well he hasn't been honest with _you_," Starscream said, "if he let you believe that mattered! Trust me, he'll find a way to reel you back in. There's always _something_ with him. And he's sure got _your_ number."

"Do you think he would treat his friend that way?"

"_Friend_?" Starscream laughed, pressing two of his digits to his faceplate. "You're not his _friend!_ You're his _frag_ toy. You're his minion at worst, his trophy at best. What, you think he loves you because he licked his transfluid out of your valve after he split you open? Just because he doesn't do that for the rest of us, you think you're something special? You think you _matter?"_

The tenderness of that forbidden moment turned his tanks. The memory wouldn't fade—it terrified him what he might have seen if he had looked up a moment earlier, if he had seen Megatron's face instead of Rung's. The blazing reactor of the movement was supposed to be as pitiless and untouchable as a star, the spark that had them all caught in its gravity, and it was bearable—it was bearable—

Rung levered himself up onto the berth and perched there, watching Starscream with his uncannily off-blue optics.

"I don't belong to him, you know," Rung said. And then, his expression softening in some indescribable way— "Neither do you."

"He has you by the spark!" Starscream spit. "From the moment he got his spike inside you, this place owned you!"

"I don't think we're really talking about me," Rung said.

Starscream slammed his fist into the wall with a _crack_. "Yes we are!"

For a moment he only vented in mute fury, coolant bubbling in his lines. His visual centers were glitching, sending him fried lagging images of Rung's emotionless blue gaze. And then, he relaxed. "But it's _alright_," he said, letting his fist fall open at his side. He rolled his neck, loosening up the cables of his protoform. "It's alright, because Megatron isn't the only person here you can rely on."

Rung lifted a brow. "He isn't?"

"Change is coming," Starscream remarked, running the wicked tip of a digit over Rung's meager possessions. "Megatron's day at the head of this movement is coming to an end. And then, _I'll _be the one you're spreading your legs for."

Rung only cocked his head. "Is that what you want?"

"What the pit is that supposed to mean?"

"I mean," Rung said, evenly, "do you actually want me, or are you just angry he has something you don't?"

It was a testament to how out of sorts the night had left him that Starscream couldn't even formulate an answer for a moment.

The plate glass of Rung's spark chamber blazed. The articulation of his joints was so fine, the line of his jaw so sharp. He couldn't blame Megatron for _wanting_ a taste.

"Can't it be both?" Starscream said, bitterly. He hated telling people the truth. They never believed him.

Right—_right_. What was he actually doing here? Seducing someone for political capital? He did that often enough, he knew how to do that.

He crossed the room at a smooth predatory pace, thrusters clicking against the floor. Rung made no move to escape him, only tilting his head with interest as Starscream drew closer. There was a faint smell of patching mesh, antiseptic, the lingering tang of the medical bay—something at once soothing and unnerving.

"Think about it," Starscream said, letting a clawtip drag over the berth, approaching Rung klik by drawn out klik. "I would make a _much _better liege than Megatron. Whatever that brute does to you, I can do it ten times sweeter. I'm amenable to _compromise_, you know. I listen to _advice_. Stay here under me, and I'll give you the room you need to really make something of yourself. You support me, and I'll… support… you."

His clawtips walked once, twice, three times, and suddenly they had slipped into the seam of Rung's hip, brushing the delicate protoform beneath. The light beneath Rung's spark panel gave a flare, but other than that, he sat perfectly still.

"Come on," Starscream cajoled, "don't you want to be on the winning side?"

"If I say no, will you stop?"

Starscream curled his lip. "I'm not an _animal,_" he said.

Rung considered him for a long minute, long enough that Starscream started to worry that he needed to disengage and approach this problem from a new angle. But then Rung lifted his servo and gently touched the face looming over his, fingers warm and delicate.

"He has you wound terribly tight, doesn't he?" Rung murmured, his palm following the curve of Starscream's faceplate. "But that's the problem with winding a spring. Sooner or later, it can't take the tension anymore."

"Stop pretending like you know anything about me," Starscream hissed.

Rung swung his legs up onto the berth and lay back, his servos settling lightly against his chestplates. The sight of his delicate bright fingers splayed on either side of his humming spark chamber sent a jolt of heat through Starscream's wiring, a fizzle of charge down his spinal strut. He leaned in closer, wings shuddering.

Rung's servos pushed down over the curve of his chest plate, over his abdomen, and came to rest over his modesty panel. His optics dimmed as his fingertips stroked the seams of his interface panel, his chin tipped back the slightest bit.

"This is how I like to be touched," Rung said, and spread his thighs apart on the berth.

The modesty cover slid back under Rung's servos. With deliberate fingers, he touched either side of his plump valve and parted it, revealing the twitching and glistening inner mesh. Starscream shifted unconsciously, his own valve giving a deep, hard clench inside of him.

Rung drew a fingertip through the slickness inside himself, shuddering a little when he bumped his anterior node. "If you would still like to," he said, "I consent. On the condition that you stay the rest of the shift when you're finished with me. I don't think you've recharged at all since I last saw you."

Starscream stared at him. The throbbing heat behind his own panels slowly drowned out the screaming alerts at the back of his processor reminding him that sleeping near _anyone_, let alone someone who had _happily let Megatron eat them out, _was asking for a plasma blast in the spark. What could a thing like Rung really do to him?

A smirk broke out across Starscream's faceplate.

He grabbed hold of Rung's hips and dragged him closer, forcing knees to fold against his chassis. "What's wrong," he said, giving the thighs a long leisurely stroke. "Our glorious master doesn't give you as much of his time as you'd like? Is your berth cold, pet?"

Rung shot him a sidelong look, but with his bent thighs and the flickering light of his anterior node glinting off his slickness, it wasn't particularly compelling. Starscream initiated interface protocols, retracting the cover over his array and allowing his spike to pressurize at long, lovely last.

He circled the rim of Rung's spike housing with one claw, but it gave no sign of responding. He drew back.

"Would you like to be spiked?" Starscream asked. He ran his palms down Rung's thighs and up his frame, with the same slow strokes that Rung used on himself. "I live to serve, you know. Only the best for my master's favorite."

"Does being petty turn you on?" Rung replied, with a vaguely amused expression.

Starscream flattened his servo against the crackling glass, leaning with just enough of his weight to hold Rung inescapably against the berth. "Does being _used _turn you on?"

"I wouldn't put it that way," Rung said, although his charge snapped and sparked under Starscream's fingers. "I enjoy giving people what they need."

Rung's node flickered once and then blazed to hungry life as Starscream rolled it between his fingers. "Heh," he said, when Rung jolted. "You think I need anything from _you?"_

Rung's mouth had come open, intake venting air to the systems that seethed under his plating. Starscream could feel the heat of him from here, and he grinned. How _hot_ that little valve was going to be. The tip of his spike smeared prefluid against the edge of the berth, just thinking about it. He was going to sink into that like an oil bath.

Rung pushed his hips up into Starscream's touch, all but begging to be taken. His plating gave a soft creak under the strain of his rising temperature. Starscream curled his fingers through the mess of lubricant spilling out of Rung's valve and worked his wet fingers over the blazing node, luxuriating in the zip of charge that arced into him.

Rung arched up off the berth, the thinnest moan forcing its way out of his mouth. Spark in his throat, Starscream slammed him back down again.

"How are you so _pretty_," Starscream snarled.

At that, Rung actually turned his head away, every biolight on his body flushing with charge. His servo came up to press against his mouth, knuckles pressing lips.

"Normally," he said, behind the mask of his fingers, "compliments aren't framed as accusations, Starscream."

"Be quiet while I'm seducing you," Starscream grumbled, and pushed two fingers into the searing clench of Rung's valve.

He moved carefully, thumb against node as his fingers worked in and out. He was mindful that there was only so much he could do with the tapered shape of his digits; his claws were more suited to coaxing screams than moans from their victims. But Rung gave a series of soft encouraging noises, his frame sighing with the rhythm of slow pressure, and his gentle responsiveness whet the appetite of something low and dark and hungry. It had been a long time since anyone Starscream liaisoned with had wanted anything but to get housing-deep inside him the second his interface array onlined. That was the price you paid for trading favors with decepticons—everyone wanted to feel like they were on top. But Starscream was very good at letting other people think they were in control.

"Do you mind if I touch you?" Rung asked.

Starscream paused, fingers buried deep in soft, throbbing mesh. What kind of a question was that?

"Who am I to deny you a handful of this incredible chassis?" he said, at last, and rolled his shoulders a little, letting the whole impressive figure of himself show off a bit. He knew he looked good—enough bulk to whisper _power_, paired down enough to scream _speed_. He'd spent ages and ages getting this frame the way he wanted it, never quite satisfied, always hunting the next upgrade. When people looked at him he wanted them to _know_ what he was, he wanted them to see _Starscream,_ not model 1 seeker 345/500.

Rung reached up and touched the edge of Starscream's chest plate. "Is this alright?" he asked.

A scowl flickered across Starscream's mouth. "Just do what you want, you don't have to ask," he said. And then, hesitating, he added, "Avoid the ailerons. They're sensitive, people without wings don't get it."

Rung hummed in agreement, and went on gently mapping everything but the wings. When the steady tingle of his touch grew too much to bear, Starscream pulled his fingers from the warm hollow of Rung and shook out his joints.

"Keep your legs open for me," he said, flicking Rung's node with a clawtip. The smaller bot gave a start, a brief sharp sound popping in his vocoder.

Starscream grabbed Rung by the hips again and pulled him onto his spike in one swift, deliberate movement. Pleasure shook the links of his spinal strut, racing up through him like lightning clawing up to meet the sky.

"_Oh_," Rung said, optics pouring light.

Starscream bared his denta and shivered with delight. That was it, that was _it_, molten hot and slippery and perfectly giving for him. This was the kind of luxury Starscream _deserved_. The crown, the kingdom, the fame. Someday when this was all _his_, all the glory and the power and the silky ripple of Rung's valve, Primus that was going to be a good day.

"_Excellent_," he hissed. "You are _absolutely_ worth the trouble of killing a king."

To come home to this—to pull Rung into his lap and relax, without looking over his shoulder, without the hunger itching under his plates—he couldn't think of a better way to rule the world. Returning to this, to Rung's soft voice and gentle fingers, would make all of it worth it. Oh, he _would_ be a pretty prize, yes.

Rung's optics flickered. "Do you think you can inherit me?"

Starscream licked his lips. "If he was good enough for you, I _certainly_ am."

"It doesn't work like that," Rung said. "None of this works like that."

Starscream drew out of Rung's body in a long, lazy stroke, the tip of his spike catching mesh and bobbing free. A bubble of prefluid dripped against Rung's node. "Let's see if I can't change your mind," he said, and drove back in.

The whole array of interior nodes rolled and caught against Starscream's spike, emitting sizzles of charge underneath the assault. A long, desperate moan split the air between them. Rung's servos scrabbled at the berth, trying to get leverage as Starscream thrust into him.

"You're big," Rung managed, vocoder spitting static at the edges.

"You're small," Starscream countered.

Rung flexed his internals, a moment of blinding sweet pressure bearing down on Starscream before it dispersed. "Six of one, half a dozen of the other," Rung allowed. "Be careful. I'm not breakable, but I can break."

It was—_odd_, to hear someone admit that so frankly. Starscream rocked into him, watching the plump mesh swallow his spike, and wondered if he was being _trusted_ here. Wouldn't that be a novelty. Maybe someone like Rung had no choice but to trust one person or another, to get along in the world. And if you lived like that, why _not _aim for the top?

Well. Megatron was strong, but Starscream was the capable one. Time would show that much.

Starscream hauled one of Rung's legs up on his hip. "How about _that,_" Starscream said, and kneaded Rung's anterior node.

Rung let out a strained _mmmmnn_, twisting his head away. Savage satisfaction sliced through Starscream's tanks, keen as a knife.

Their lights flickered in the half-dark. Starscream forced himself to slow down from the usual hellblaze of a pace he defaulted to in the berthroom. Leisurely but relentless, he slammed home against Rung's ceiling node again and again, until Rung was nothing but appreciative humming and strutless compliance. Steam from both of their vents thickened the air.

Bent down close over him like this, hips against hips, Starscream was struck all over again by the shape of Rung, by the easiness of his being, by the warmth with which he stroked Starscream's shoulders even as his glass plating spit sparks madly. It was disorientingly gentle. In the fragmenting lines of his thought processes, it was becoming less clear who exactly was seducing whom. Although Starscream had made the first move, although he had offered his sample of services with schemes already fomenting in his longterm analytic processor—he felt off balance.

Rung coaxed Starscream deeper into himself as if he too was trying to pry some vulnerable thing free, to make some offer of his own, to display some tempting service—

"Rung," Starscream muttered, as if the word itself had any secret insight into the living mech beneath him.

Rung seized up, valve clenching wildly. His grip tightened.

"Will you," he said, "will you say that—again?"

"What, your designation?" Starscream glanced down at him, thoughtfully, and worked his fingers into a transformation seam. "_Rung_," he said, and watched as something came unraveled in Rung, a tension that until that moment had been invisible and imperceptible.

A smirk pulled at Starscream's mouth. "Doesn't Megatron call you by your name?"

"He does," Rung panted. "Most - most people don't."

Something unpleasant lanced through Starscream's spark, black as tar, before smugness overtook it ruthlessly. "Oh they _don't, _do they," he said. "Well, I guarantee you, your designation is the last thing I'll forget after a rendezvous like this, _Rung_."

Rung stiffened, and then he grabbed hold of Starscream's shoulder and pulled himself upright, throwing his arms around Starscream's neck. The decepticon froze, for a moment unsure whether Rung was about to go for the throat or what. But Rung only surged against him, scraping their chestplates as he hooked his legs behind Starscream.

His mouth was—very close. Very, very much within reach, now.

"Alright," Rung said, gripping the back of Starscream's helm in one hand. "Let's pretend that's true."

Despite the fact that he was buried inside of and significantly bigger than Rung, Starscream experienced the disorienting sensation of having lost control of the situation.

Rung kissed him, and Starscream let him do it.

[x]

The very air of the CMO quarters tasted, when Starscream opened his mouth to in-vent, of ozone and steam. He felt a little twitchy about the fact that Rung had slung an arm and a leg over his frame. He suspected that Rung was doing it specifically to hold him in place, even though if Starscream _had_ wanted to get up and leave, no amount of loose limbs would have stopped him. But he did grudgingly respect that Rung hadn't entirely trusted him to keep to the terms of their initial agreement.

Rung's servo drifted across turbines, reaching for something. He found Starscream's own servo where it was resting against his middle and took hold of it. The deep-wired joints twitched as Rung stroked over them.

"You're very sharp," he said. "Sharp enough, I hope, to keep up with a deadly game like the one you're playing. I wouldn't like to be your enemy."

"What would you _like_ to be?" Starscream sneered.

The smile that cracked Rung's lips was entirely too knowing. "Well I think that's entirely up to you."

Starscream frowned.

"Sooner or later I'm leaving," Rung said. "I am. And when I go, I want you to consider coming with me. Whatever it is you think you can get—whatever it is you're after—you're not going to find it here."

"So the free room and board isn't doing it for you, hm?" Starscream said. "How about the unlimited complimentary spike? Not the level of luxury you're accustomed to?"

Rung kneaded his thumb into the palm of Starscream's servo, easing the tightness of the joints and wires. "I think you can judge a person fairly well by how they treat their subordinates," he said, as claws twitched in relief under his attention. "I'm not… happy, with what I'm seeing here."

"What, Mighty Megatron swaggering around like he came fresh out of the arena, pretending he knows the first fragging thing about running an army?"

"I don't like that it's an army at all," Rung said. "But no, that's not—no. I already knew that he had a powerful personality. What I don't like is the way he has you wound up."

"He doesn't have me _wound up_," Starscream retorted. "I can wind myself up just fine without his help!" Then he grimaced. "Wait, no…"

There was a faint breath of movement, like Rung was laughing silently against his side. Starscream made a sour face at the ceiling.

"You do know he dotes on you," Rung said, once the silent convulsions had eased off. "He's viciously proud of your advancement through the ranks."

Starscream ripped his servo out of Rung's grip. "Megatron doesn't give a damn about me or anyone else," he said. "All he cares about is being the last body at the top of the pile."

Rung lifted his head. "That," he said. "I don't like that he lets you think that. It's one thing to not care about someone, but it's another thing entirely, deliberately encouraging someone to think you don't care about them when you do. I'm not sure what game he's playing at."

"Stop talking about him," Starscream ground out. Blindly, he grabbed hold of Rung's aft and squeezed the smaller bot against himself. "_I'm_ the one who just fragged the living spark out of you. Talk about me, if you _must_ talk about something."

Rung gave another silent laugh, knuckles pressing against his lips. His warmth slowly seeped into everything he touched, all his heat as easily dispersed as produced.

"Ah, Commander," he sighed. "I hope you're one of the ones who remember."

Across the room, still vibrant even in the half-dark, the flimsy flight model sat pink among the dust.

* * *

3\. The Past; or, Swallow Your Own Key

The unfortunate fact of life is that sometimes it is not enough to simply live a quiet life, keeping your head down. The hammer loves the nail; one will find the other, sooner or later.

By the first time Rung met council member One of Twelve, his visits to the Functionist center had become almost routine, a familiar discomfort, unremarkable. He had been between books at that time-his star a bit on the wane, in recent centuries, but certainly not extinguished. A clever new crop of young psychiatrists were on the rise, and among their number several had sought Rung out specifically for guidance and support. Mentoring had made him happy. Froid, daring and innovative and distinctly interested in Rung, had made him happy.

The census, although it had not made him happy, seemed like a fleeting thing then. A momentary concession to a religious party already losing ground in the greater political scene. Although the frequent summons were inconvenient, he hadn't worried much about them. Sooner or later they would forget about him and move on. Everyone does eventually. It's just a matter of holding still.

He meets the councilmech on his fortieth visit to the Functionist Headquarters, on a day that should have been unremarkable...

The seat of the Functionist council is as utilitarian as it is finely constructed, luxurious materials at exorbitant cost to furnish a gaping, empty lobby with one massive reception desk. The Receptionist doesn't need to look up from his switchboard, nor can he stand to greet Rung, because of course his masters have seen fit to expediently bolt and jack him in to the apparatus. Nonetheless, when he senses Rung coming, there's an immediate relaxation.

"Back again, eh," he says, his hollow eyes flickering and cycling as he processes the data of every security device simultaneously, most likely watching Rung from several angles across the lobby. As it does every time Rung encounters the Receptionist, a chill rattles down his spine. He _can _imagine what kind of lot in life would make being bolted into a terminal seem like a preferable alternative, but it's a terrible thing to contemplate.

Rung makes some small talk with the Receptionist; he always makes sure to arrive early so there's plenty of time to describe to him how the weather is outside, or what the traffic was like, or the new construction going up at the edge of Translucentia Heights. Every time, he spends the length of their conversation looking for signs of rust or form fatigue in the Receptionist's seams. He doesn't know what he'll do if he ever finds them.

After that it's a quick shot up to the floor where the examiners are expecting him; he's come in enough times now that he could find the way in stand-by mode. The door is open for him when he arrives.

The first few times he showed up, he had met only technicians and secretaries. By now he's met Nine of Twelve a spare handful of times, but mostly, still, he only sees grunts and the odd surgeon.

"Hello, Leafspring," Rung says, addressing the mech behind the monitor.

Leafspring startles, the adaptors in each hand clunking clumsily against each other as he jumps and then glances over his shoulder. "Hey, um, Rung," he says.

His optics keep sliding towards the inner doorway, the closed entrance to the sterile lab. Rung fights back a grimace-if they're using the sterile lab today, it's not going to be a good day. Honestly none of his days spent at the Functionist center are good days, but anything that necessitates a sterile environment is almost certainly going to involve opening him up again for invasive evaluations.

Rung points at the lab door. "You want me to go on in?" he asks, trying for a friendly smile.

"What? Oh, no," Leafspring says. The jungle of blue and black cables carpeting the floor spark in a cascade as Leafspring plugs one end of the adaptor into the another. There's no particularly clear place on the floor to stand-the examination table is missing entirely-

Rung glances at the door again, uneasy. "Well… alright then," he says. "Where _do _you want me?"

_"Right there will be fine," _says a voice, smooth and synthetic, as the lab door comes open.

Ice prickles in Rung's fuel lines. He knows that voice. He's heard it once, perhaps twice before, although the cool, clear artificiality of it is shared by eleven others. The mech that glides into the room is one whom Rung has seen gracing the halls here in the company of his brothers, observing silently through the glass windows of the upper floors, dispensing orders to gunshy assistants.

One of Twelve is not a particularly large mech. Of a breed a little older than the War of the Primes, they are all-like Rung, in fact-mode fidelists. Aristocrats, blue-wired from pede to helm; not for them the crude augmentation of the wartime arms race. Nonetheless, the golden bands inset between those finger joints can't possibly be more than ornamentation. They don't have the look of something that serves a purpose. Rung eyes them, keeping his own conclusions to himself.

"Hello, Dr. Rung," the councilor says, his single burning optic spinning as it zooms in to appraise the visitor. "What a fascination it is to finally meet you. You've been giving our taxonomists quite the tease, haven't you?"

The phrasing lights up several warning signs in the part of his processor that handles psychoanalytics.

"I," Rung says, and then resets his voice box, steadying himself. "Not my intention, I assure you."

He has met a different member of the Twelve several times-Nine, the investigator. Nine's oversight makes sense, given that Rung's presence here is part of an ongoing investigation. One's presence, however, is more difficult to construe.

"To what do I owe the visit?" Rung ventures, always weak to the pull of curiosity.

One tilts his head slightly. "I will be directing the evaluations today," he informs Rung. "I would like to see for myself why it is taking so long for our supposedly competent scientists to produce any useful data on you."

"Your scientists are all very dedicated workers," Rung says, trying not to grimace at the memory of the more invasive tests. "I'm sure they're doing their best."

"And yet after decades of investigation we know as little now as the day you reported for census taking. Meanwhile, the whole of Cybertron has been classified and organized down to the last putting trash scuttle, while you remain… adrift."

"I've been told I'm an enigma," Rung says, carefully.

"Quite so," One says. "And how is it, I wonder, that a mech does not know his own purpose?"

That tone is like poison candy. Rung feels his back plating twitch. "I'm as affected by information creep as anyone, councilor. As far back as my clearest memory, I haven't been used for anything more complicated than-unfortunately-a stepping stool, once."

Each of the Twelve, with their monocular optics and mouthless faces, are uncanny figures. Rung can tell just by watching the shifts of Leafspring's body language how discomfiting the average person finds a member of the Twelve. But Rung has served as a therapist for a few empuratees over the years-hacked off violence in their muted faces, poorly matched lines of symmetry, bulk in the wrong places, graceless and dismembered-and he's seen far worse than one aristocrat's alien symmetry. He isn't moved.

"One might think," the councilor goes on, sidling closer, "that you were deliberating withholding something from us."

"I assure you," Rung says, holding his ground, "I'd like to be done with this as much as anyone else here. The sooner this is wrapped up, the sooner I can get back to planning for my conference."

"Conference," One echoes, pronouncing it as if finding the word wanting in some way. "Yes. You're presenting a paper on… what was it? Architecture?"

"Archetypes," Rung corrects him. "I have a theory about the underlying structure of personality programming that suggests we are all more similar than-"

"And do you suppose that's the kind of work for a bot like _you?" _One asks, pushing Rung's jaw to the side as if inspecting him for casting flaws. "A barely-passable footstool playing at doctor?" The tip of his finger is unsettlingly warm, and he seems carelessly confident that he can do whatever he pleases.

Rung knows a baited hook when he sees one. He ducks his head out of the way as politely as he can, and is relieved when One's touch doesn't follow him.

"Like I said, I'm on a bit of a schedule," Rung hedges, "so if it's all the same to you, I'm ready to get started."

One's single optic blazes. "Your eagerness does you credit," he says, and it's impossible to tell if it's in sincerity or irony.

"Eagerness, yes," Rung says. He glances around the room once more, just in case. "There doesn't seem to be anywhere to sit-usually there's an examination berth here somewhere-"

"Oh, we won't be needing that for someone like you," One says. "Why don't you assume a position of appropriate respect, _doctor?"_

Rung's tanks turn over. "I beg your pardon?

"Down." One of Twelve taps his finger in the direction of the ground. It's almost playful. "On your knees."

"I _am _submitting to these examinations voluntarily," Rung says. "I can leave whenever I like, Councilor."

"You think so, do you?" One replies. He reaches out and chucks Rung's chin with one glinting finger, an over-familiar touch that makes Rung's plating crawl. "Yes, you can always leave, of course. You're not bolted to the floor, now, are you?"

One tilts his head like he's waiting for a laugh. Rung is much too uneasy to even consider faking one.

"No, you're not," One answers himself, after a moment. He turns his expressionless optic on the technician's station. "You can leave here at any time. Then again, a citizen who does not comply with the census is in violation of his government's strictures. Letting a doctor go about like that, flouting his civic duty, well. He isn't showing a good example for his patients, is he?"

The touch traces from chin to jaw to audial. One of Twelve runs his fingertip up the length of Rung's antenna, provoking an involuntary shiver. There is nothing in that single, yellow optic. No flicker, no curve, no depth. The glass is good quality, the housing intricate and elegant despite its deep uncanniness.

"I understand at one time you were quite indispensable to the senate. It's a shame how fleeting such favor can be." His touch is light and almost curious, stroking over the sensitive apparatus. "Who, I wonder, would protect you now?"

Rung understands that he's being threatened. He stands stock still while One rolls his antenna between those glimmering fingers, fuel pump pounding, hands locked into fists.

"So," One says, and tweaks the antenna (Rung's sensor net jolts) before finally letting go. "Get on your knees, doctor."

The door is only a series of steps away. It's even open, the blue tile of the hallway visible through it. Rung can go. He can go. But-this isn't about what Rung wants. The work he does is important; the work _must _continue. He has responsibilities. He has a duty of care. Back in Rodion, there are people who count on him.

And more than that-he's not sure who he would be, without the work.

Slowly, jaw set, Rung sinks to his knees. The joints give a soft groan of protest as they hit the floor, old components not liking the jostle.

"Better," One purrs.

"Is that all?" Rung asks tightly.

"As a matter of fact, it isn't." One turns from him, a hand gesturing lazily. "Stay there. Don't get up."

So Rung stays. He stays while One of Twelve observes the monitors and inspects the hardline equipment, flips through the charts, and all the rest. Leafspring gives Rung several uneasy sympathetic glances when he thinks One isn't looking, his weight shifting uncomfortably behind the row of databanks. He does it one too many times, as it turns out. Rung is staring ahead, deliberately not watching One of Twelve pry open his medical ports, when the councilmech notices.

"Technician," One says, snapping his fingers sharply. "Do you find the subject distracting?"

Leafspring flinches. "I-" he stutters. "No, sir. I just… he's a pretty old model. His joints might not be designed to take that much prolonged pressure. I could find him a-"

"_Technician _," One cuts through. "Let me invest some advice in you that your superiors seem to have overlooked. You mustn't pity these troublemakers, you see? All the rebellious, blasphemous freethinkers feed off your pity. They make a home in it, like electrovoles hollowing out a corpse for their wretched nests. You must be hard with them, like Primus intended."

As he talks, One is slotting cable after cable into Rung's medical ports, employing cable splitters when he runs out of viable plug space. The sight of it sets Rung on edge-he tells himself it's a natural reaction to the sight of the cable splitter, the uncanniness of that tool is hard wired into their species somewhere deep in the instinctual programming, but-

His sensor net is alive and crawling with the overstimulation of so many disparate feeds. Every autonomous program is trying to online at once, inside of him, from intake purge to interface systems.

"You must never allow yourself to be tempted by a warm set of panels," One is telling (ostensibly) Leafspring, although in his growing intensity all he seems to have an eye for are Rung's sparking, overworked ports. "Smiles, pleas, sob stories-"

One slams a cable into his last available port and Rung can't hold back a shudder.

"Half a vorn of testing," One says, and despite his lack of a mouth to pronounce it, there's something audibly like a snarl in his voice. "And not one ounce of result to show for it. The only thing you seem to be good for is taking up _space _."

Rung grits his denta and clutches his knees, trying not to let on how much the simultaneous foreign programs are overtaxing his systems. There's a reason why they usually only subject him to one or two at a time-this many at once would knock a less resilient bot into hard reboot. He can't imagine the data quality is very good either. Several of these _have _to be interfering with each other.

"Leave us," One says.

"Sir?" Leafspring says, confused and wary.

"Are you deaf, as well as incompetent?" One asks, without looking away from Rung, who is shuddering now intermittently on the floor before him.

"...Sir," Leafspring acknowledges, and begins reluctantly gathering up his things.

Rung's visual suite fizzles and resets. A shiver runs down his backstrut. The demands of the crawler programs are causing his frame to build heat; charge is jumping from the plugs to the ports in what his frame keeps trying to interpret as arousal.

One of Twelve circles him, mantle swishing over the floor.

"You _are _a pretty thing," One says, "for an obsolete waste of energon. The eyebrows are too much, but those hip joints nearly make up for it. You can open those up wide, can't you? You must be quite flexible. Open them up for me."

Rung grimaces. "Councilor-" he starts.

"_ Spread _your _knees_, doctor. That is an order."

Reluctantly, Rung steadies himself against the ground and parts his thighs. Although his modesty panel is firmly in place, the way One's hungry optic stares at the space between his legs-

One of the monitors give a ping. One turns away from him to get a look at the readouts, at first voraciously intent, and then with growing visible displeasure.

"Nonsense," he mutters. "You're nonsense. You shouldn't _exist _."

"That's an interesting philosophical position," Rung says, not without some bitterness. "I'll be sure to mention it at the next interdisciplinary convention. Have you gotten what you wanted?"

"Far from it," One replies, and offlines the monitor in one swift motion. "But that's alright. Now that I've seen the extent of the problem, I can see that appropriate measures will need to be taken."

Rung's spark flares cold. He's been coming here for decades, he should be at the _end _of this process, not at the start of more of it.

"I should really be getting back to my office," Rung says. "The conference is only a few work cycles away, and I still have a talk to prepare-"

One of Twelve swivels his deadeyed optic. "Oh no," he says, in an electronic purr, "no, I think they'll do just fine without you. They don't really _need_you there, do they? After all, you have a conference partner. I'm sure. Dr. Froid would be more than happy to take over your talks for the time being, given the circumstances."

Rung wants to hard-reboot his sensory array, but he knows it's pointless. He didn't mishear that. "You can't just _give _my talks to some other bot," he says, confounded. "We're not interchangeable-even if Froid _agreed _to this insanity, which he _wouldn't _-"

"I've already taken the liberty of clearing it with him," One says, waving off the matter as easily as a mote of dust. "He is more than happy to fill in for his dear friend and mentor while we proceed here. Your notes have all been transferred to his databanks as of this morning."

"But-" Rung gapes. "But that's-that's _my _work, those are _my _studies, how did you even arrange-how _long _have you been-"

One pats his cheek and Rung recoils, leaning as far from the hand as possible.

"Accommodations have been made," the councilmech says. "You will stay here, in headquarters, while the investigatory team takes a _thorough_exploration of your assets. You will recharge in a chamber we have assigned for your use. You will report for testing with the first shift cycle each day. You will fuel whenever you have completed your testing, and no sooner."

"But my patients-"

"If you want to get back to see them so very badly," One says, "you should certainly endeavor to make the testing process as efficient as possible, shouldn't you?"

By now the cables plugged into him are dead in his ports, their prodding programs no longer running through his systems. They merely sit lodged inside of him, heavy and unwelcome, crackling with charge that isn't quite dissipating. It doesn't escape him what One is doing here: Rung could only be more vulnerable right now if he was literally cracked open for internal viewing.

"One of my secretaries will show you to your quarters," One says. "You should already be quite familiar with the examination berth we requisitioned. While you are here, I must ask that you not interfere with any of the ongoing work. You wouldn't like it if we had to enforce a locked door policy."

One holds out a hand, as if to offer Rung help up. It seems a polite gesture, even kind, but Rung knows his type. The fist that strikes and the hand that feeds-it's a trap that Rung has no intention of falling into.

Rung reaches up and jerks the heaviest of the cables out of himself, letting it clunk to the ground. He's already running damage control in his processor. Once he's alone, he'll send a memo to the office and arrange for some of his colleagues to cover shifts with his most unstable patients. Froid-he can't think about this right now, not while One is watching him-well, Froid will be happy to take one _more _thing off Rung's hands, won't he? He'll keep up correspondence with whoever he can. Surely they'll allow him correspondence here? It's not as if he's being _imprisoned_.

He can weather this storm. He has leave time built up at work. Tighten your bolts, he thinks: it's just a little while longer. The work is worth it. The work is always worth it. If he can't be of help to people, he doesn't know what he would be.

"License or no license, you can't hold me here indefinitely," he says, more a reminder to himself than a warning. "I _can _leave_."_

One leans forward, takes the smallest cable and twists it free. It discharges an abrupt shock of static into Rung's port; Rung tries not to flinch.

"Yes, I'm sure you could," One says. "But doctor, where would you go?"

* * *

4\. What Future Could Be; or, _Noli Me Tangere, _for Caesar's I Am

Megatron stepped into the beautiful little apartment, and the endless seething volts of the plasma field closed tight behind him.

Was this what it had felt like for a middle-caste mech to come home to a conjunx? A familiar face waiting in a private room? A homecoming? Long ago on the sun-bright surface of their dead homeworld, he wondered if this had been how the other half lived.

On the sill of the one-way window, beneath the yellow alien skies, three little green organic plants sat neatly in their pots. Their fleshy, water-heavy blooms gave the whole apartment a strangely living, strangely exotic scent. Megatron disapproved on principle, but this was a gilded cage—the materials with which it was gilded concerned him little. The bonzai crystal growing at its slow, fractal rate; the woven mesh and the luxurious cushions; the workbench on the corner smelling of glue and scattered with shavings of metal, bits of plastic.

Rung looked up. The green-blue glass of his spectacles caught light impassively—his servos settled slowly against the work table.

"Ah," he said. "Back again, after all."

Megatron made his way through the room at a leisurely pace, touching odds and ends that caught his eye. He traced an appreciative finger over the stained glass of a lamp, its glowing yellow mosaic shaping out the contours of a spark. He had sourced it himself, of course. He made a point of assessing whatever palaces and galleries his army encountered, before they burned each to the ground. Most of the actually valuable things would end up as incentives for Tarn and the occasional cultured mercenary. The things he was really looking for, those things he knew when he saw.

Rung watched as he caressed the various lovely things, taking stock of the collection. He couldn't say he cared particularly for any of it, but the message was the thing-the message is always the thing. Rung could accept or discard whatever he liked, but everything in this room was ultimately at the disposal of Megatron.

"Something on your mind?" Rung said, levelly.

"Always," Megatron replied. A glass bauble gave a soft chime. "Minefields, power games, weapons of war."

"And how _is _Starscream," Rung asked, folding his servos on the desk.

"He's stopped asking about you," Megatron said, tapping a mobile in the shape of their home solar system, so that it spun lazily for him. "Once I told him how Tarn reached through your chest and peeled your spark strip by strip like slag off a piece of iron ore, he didn't ask again."

"Tarn didn't do that," Rung says. "But I suppose you wouldn't like Starscream to know I'm still alive, after all. You finally have me all to yourself. You must like that."

Behind Rung, mounted on the wall like an ever-present gallery of witnesses, were the ships. A pitiful wounded fleet, wings and rostra broken like birds; brazen in the display case, all their scattered pieces assembled around them.

Megatron curled his lip at them.

Their hollow-eyed judgement never changed, although it had been a century now since Megatron tore down their shelves and slung the contents across the empty shell of Rung's abandoned quarters, smashing them to pieces against the walls. Although Rung could have fixed them all several times over by now, with the neat collection of tools that sat even now beneath the plasma charged window. The dust settling from the fist-shaped holes in the walls-the berth ripped up by the bolts and slammed against the floor-the ships remembered all these things.

The house-arrest collar sat dull and silver against Rung's throat.

"They had me for weeks, you know," Rung said, fingering the thin band with an almost absent little motion. "You do know that, of course you know. I'm sure you looked over the list of _remonstrations _at some point. Did you like what they did to my fuel tank? I've had worse, but barely."

Of course the house-arrest inhibitor could have been installed as a chip just as easily. The collar wasn't strictly necessary. There was no reason for it, except as a reminder.

"And yet," Rung continued, "I am alive. And everyone knows the DJD don't let their playthings live."

Although a reminder for which of them, precisely?

"You could have had me killed," Rung said. "You could have killed me yourself."

The plate glass of Rung's spark chamber burned. Perhaps not a conjunx. Perhaps a pet—a collector's menagerie of one.

"Do you want to talk about that?" Rung said, in a hard, businesslike voice.

Polished to a gleam, Rung was detailed and aligned and a specimen of health. The scars were hardly visible, even on close inspection.

After the DJD recovered him, one of Rung's own hand-trained staff had pieced him back together, silent and terrified in the chamber where Megatron left the medic to work. On the table, Rung had lain like one of his shattered model ships: open and blank and surrounded by an orderly inventory of his broke parts. The Justice Division was well skilled in the art of creating the most pain possible without fatality. A competent enough medic-a frightened enough medic-could glue a victim back together as easily as a broken toy.

It needn't have been that way. Rung shouldn't have fought them. Megatron had given them specific orders to take Rung alive, with minimal damage. He was a noncombatant, Megatron had assured them; he would surrender with a clear demonstration of force. Exert your dominance, retrieve him, and return him to me. Nowhere in that plan had Megatron anticipated more than token defiance. Rung was reasonable, practical: he would bend to a firm servo.

He'd been wrong, in the end. Rung kept proving him wrong.

"This is an army," Megatron growled. "We are balanced on the razor edge of victory and you were an _officer. _The usual punishment for defection is death."

Rung quirked an eyebrow. "Haven't you always said it's better to die free than to live a slave?"

Megatron crossed the floor, coming to loom at the edge of Rung's worktable. He leaned across the desk, splaying his servos over the dust and shavings. With the doctor seated, the difference in their sizes was at its starkest. And still, as Megatron dipped in close, Rung did not retreat.

"Ah," Megatron said, "But you could do so much more than die. You could suffer. You could plead."

Rung's expression remained inscrutable behind his glasses. "And that would bring you satisfaction, would it?"

"You resent me," Megatron observed. He took hold of Rung's chin, the tips of his fingers blunt and brutish by comparison. "Perhaps I should have left you with Tarn a while longer. He made a stirring case for why he should be given jurisdiction over you. Quite impassioned."

"I do have a _fair _amount of experience with pain," Rung said, his delicate jaw set tightly in the cage of Megatron's fingers.

"The Functionists were blunted tools," Megatron said, leaning in closer. "My soldiers are fine instruments. After a few years of his tender care, you would beg for my forgiveness. You would crawl to me in a trail of your own oil and beg for my leash."

Rung looked up at him, and in that grim expression there was an echo of something like regret. "No," Rung said. "I wouldn't."

Megatron took his servo back roughly, pushing Rung's face aside as he let go. For a moment, Rung continued looking at the wall.

"I have been _merciful _with you," Megatron said, "up until now. The price of your disobedience-"

"This isn't a mercy," Rung cut in, his tone like cold steel, "except for you."

A dark mood bit at Megatron's processor.

On the work table, half-assembled, sat a replica of this room. Like all of Rung's little models, it was being carefully assembled with tweezers and pins. Cultivated frozen domesticity: tiny berths and tiny desks, a life frozen in a single moment for the appreciation of the collector. They used to sit in his office on the Nemesis at times, on rare days—Megatron made the time to do so, because it was part of the process of keeping Rung to his side, and it required so little of him in any case—while Rung worked. A datapad of field reports to scroll through in companionable silence while Rung hummed softly to himself, assembling room after tiny room.

_I only keep ships I've served on, _Rung told him once.

On the day Rung had begun construction of the Nemesis without fanfare, fierce pride—fierce pleasure—had gripped Megatron in the quiet easiness of that office. His ship. His doctor. His prize.

With the flex of his wrist, he sent the worktable toppling away. The model crashed across the floor, the table bounced and tore a chunk of plaster from the wall.

"Stand up," Megatron said.

Stiffly, Rung levered himself upright. A dark pleasure seeped up in Megatron's fuel pump.

"Come here."

The deliberate steps halted just in front of Megatron, who considered Rung with a voracious silence.

"There _is _something on your mind," Rung observed. "You always come to see me when there's something on your mind."

"As I said," Megatron replied. "There's always something on my mind. Turn around."

There was a little shiver of unease, smothered almost the moment it raced through the doctor. Rung steadied himself, and then spun on his heel. His servos hung at his sides, twitching as he fought the urge to ball them into fists.

"I can still taste the heat of you," Megatron said, taking hold of the back of Rung's neck. "Let me taste you again."

"I think I've made my position on that very clear," Rung replied, even as the panels along the length of his spinal strut rippled away from Megatron's touch. His chin was up; he kept his focus on the far wall.

"I've been kept in solitary confinement before," Megatron murmured, stroking a finger over a flicking antenna. "It must be so quiet here, when I'm away. The sound of your own fuel pump, the rattling in your head. It starts to ache in your struts, doesn't it? In your spark?" He let his servo trace down Rung's shoulder. "In your array?"

Rung locked so still that his joints nearly creaked.

After so many late off-shifts in the welcoming cradle of Rung's arms, in the crux of his open legs, Megatron knew the feeling of Rung's arousal intimately: the thrum of his charge racing through every conductive line, the whisper of his vents, the electric crackle of static across his spark-glass. The little flick of his antenna.

"You still want me," Megatron said.

"I'm still attracted to you," Rung corrected. "You deliberately obscure the difference."

Charge jumped from bright armor and grounded itself in Megatron's fingertips as he stroked an audial.

"You still love me," Megatron said.

There was a dry sound as Rung visibly worked to get words past his intake. "I find it very interesting," he said, after a moment, "how you always avoided that word when I was free and serving you of my own volition, and yet you're happy to use it now."

"You still love me," Megatron went on, ignoring him, "because you know that I'm right, deep down. You understand that I'm taking care of you, the way I always have. I'm doing this for your own good. If you need to vent your frustrations, I will indulge you."

Rung turned abruptly, his mouth pressed into an exasperated line. "Of course I still love you," he said. "I've loved you since you spent three days trying to convince me that it was vitally important to my understanding of _Omega Prime _that I admit Breakwave wanted Omega. I've loved you since you wrote me a three page prospectus on why I should allow you to nuke Froid from orbit. I loved you when you were kind and I loved you when you were cruel, and someday I may find it within myself to forgive you, but Megatron I do not trust you, and I will never trust you again."

For a moment, every bit of cool, certain pleasure Megatron had felt since he stepped into this room flickered, like light dying on a broken screen. What remained beneath, in the dark, was void and glass and something surging desperately, trying to reignite that faulty circuit.

And then the light flicked back on.

"I don't require your trust," Megatron said, reaching out, "I only require your obedience."

He took Rung by the throat and pushed him down against the floor, until the back of his helm was held pressed there. The band of the house arrest collar had a strange, unpleasant texture under his grip; cold where the rest of Rung was warm.

Rung didn't fight him, he noted with satisfaction. Even after all his moralizing and resistance, Rung's frame recognized its master. It submitted beautifully as he refamiliarized himself with each delicate joint and gleaming panel.

The metal was hot under his probing fingers. Rung's hips gave aborted little twitches as his thighs were stroked, his throat flexing under Megatron's firm servo.

"Open up for me," Megatron murmured, fingertips sliding over the ball of a hip and across the surface of hotter burning paces.

"You're unbelievable," Rung said, his mouth a grim line.

Megatron smirked and dipped in closer, palming the warm modesty cover.

"How long has it been?" he said, his mouth at Rung's audial as his servo rubbed gently over the closed interface array. "Do you take care of yourself in here, Rung? You know I have surveillance. I could easily find out."

"That would be a new low for you," Rung replied, "if I had done, which I have not."

Megatron let out a low hum of satisfaction. No one had touched Rung since the last time Megatron laid him bare-not Starscream, and not even his own servo. "Let me take care of you," he said. "Let me remind you how good it feels to be mine."

Charge rippled across Rung's frame, nipping at Megatron's fingers. His fans had kicked on, deep in his chassis somewhere. With his low performance engine they barely whispered, but Megatron knew their sound intimately. And still, Rung watched him impassively, mind refusing to capitulate where frame was more than happy to submit.

Megatron pressed a kiss to Rung's audial, and then Rung's jaw, and then to the vulnerable throat in his grip, which flexed involuntarily at the brush of his mouth.

"Haven't I treated you well?" he said, into the underside of Rung's jaw.

Rung balled his fists at his sides, staring straight ahead. His frame trembled.

"Despite your ungratefulness," Megatron said, "haven't I given you everything you've asked for, each time you asked for it? When you had nowhere to go, I gave you a home. When Cybertron discarded you, I took you up. I gave you a title-I gave you a cause-I gave you a place at my table-"

With each item he pressed another kiss to Rung's throat, feeling the pump of fuel lines underneath his glossa and lips. It was intoxicatingly familiar, the way Rung responded to him. His curves and edges fit into Megatron's palms as if he were forged to be handled by no one but him.

"I _found _you," Megatron said, digging his fingers in. "I took you from that pitiful, crippled practice and I put you at the head of an army. No one else saw what I saw in you. No one saw your value but me, no one saw your _bravery_, your _dedication-"_

The delicate frame under his servo began to creak with the pressure of his grip. Rung had bitten into his own cheek at some point, trying to hold still and silent. Megatron released him, hovering for a moment before returning his touch more gently. Rung shivered as Megatron caressed him slowly, lingering at seams and joints.

"I can be merciful," he said, and cupped the panel of Rung's array in his palm. "You are of more use to me on the flagship than here, rusting away in this cell. Apologize for your petulance. Swear allegiance to me." His servo slipped up, over Rung's abdomen, and came to rest over the crackling glass of his spark chamber. "Take my brand."

Megatron's engine purred in his chassis as charge bit up from the glass into his servo, climbing and clawing at him as if Rung's very spark was inviting him to touch. Rung twitched, and then turned his head away.

"Obey me," Megtron said, stroking the glass with his thumb, "_serve _me-and I will be your slave."

Rung made a tight little sound, his chest flexing as if he was trying not to arch. Megatron knew what Rung liked. He liked to be held tightly and touched slowly, to be attended to, to be cared for. He liked to be treated like something rare and precious, licked into like a delicacy, cossetted and savored.

There were others who had not treated Rung with such care, and Megatron was determined to remind his faithless servant who was the better option. On his own, who knew what new sort of master would find him? This galaxy was no place for a lone noncombatant. There was a war on, after all.

Megatron sat back and took Rung by the thighs, pushing him over the floor until his interface array was level with Megatron's face. It was hardly a difficult thing to hold his legs open, parted wide, despite how Rung strained to close them. Megatron lowered his head and licked over Rung's modesty panel, tasting the lubricant that leaked through the imperfect seal. The fragile thighs trembled in his servos.

"Open up for me," Megatron said again, looking up from the lubricant-slick juncture of thigh and panel, and sucked gently at the sensitive seam.

"Get-slagged-" Rung gasped.

"Open up for me," Megatron said, "and I'll open up for you. Wouldn't you like that? To be inside me again?"

The arch and jump of Rung's hips was more answer than the glitch of his strained, muffled voice. Megatron smirked to himself, relaxing into the satisfied certainty that he would have his way sooner or later, and that was why he did not see the next move coming.

Instead of trying to close his legs, Rung drew them back-which Megatron allowed, taking it for an invitation to continue-and then Rung kicked forward, slamming the heels of his pedes into Megatron's throat. Shock whited out the world for half a second, long enough for Rung to slip his grip and topple him in one vicious shove. When Megatron rolled back against the floor Rung swung up atop him, his small fist punching through the weak place in Megatron's armor left by his most recent scrape with Prime.

Megatron froze, his reaching fingers suspended between them, as the wires in his chest sparked and shouted warnings at the tug of Rung's servo. If he pulled those out, Megatron's system would crash. Just for a moment, just until self-triage could open up new pathways around them, but long enough for any number of things to happen in the environment of a prison cell.

"You should know by now," Rung said, voice low and hard, "that even the biggest and strongest opponent still has weak spots. Put your servo down."

Megatron looked up into the round, impassive blanks of Rung's glasses. He allowed his servo to drop.

It was unlikely that Rung could do anything to Megatron that would stop him from returning the blow tenfold. The wire damage would barely take a second to rectify. Even if Rung ripped it all out now, Megatron could still catch his helm in one fist and crack it like so much decorative glass before the reboot even kicked in.

"Yes," Rung said. "You could kill me now. I'm well aware of it. Would you like to try? Would that bring you pleasure?"

Megatron's servo twitched against the floor. The ache in his throat where Rung kicked him was nothing, the lowest type of priority flag in his sensor net, but the awareness of it-of Rung staring down at him, holding him at bay-

"Do you know why you still come here to see me?" Rung said. Wire sparked in his grip. "It's not because you want me to grovel and fall in line."

Every component of Megatron's frame felt strangely sensitized, disorienting in its demand for more touch, more stimulus. There was a warm pulsing, hard to ignore, where Rung's fist rested inside of him.

"I'm the only one who will tell you _no_," Rung said. In the golden fire of the afternoon he burned atop Megatron, deliberate and self possessed. "I'm the only one who will tell you the truth. And you want the truth. You _do_."

The quickness of his fuel pump, aware and alight with electricity, demanded processor space that ought to have been allocated to any number of other considerations.

"When you're on your throne, with all your soldiers around you-when you're standing on a battlefield streaked with dead mech's oil, and you hear that little voice in your spark, telling you that it's all gone too far? I want you to listen to that. I want you to feel the wind from that abyss you stand over, and I want you to think of me."

Rung's modesty panel snapped open, revealing the glittering swell of his valve. The light of his anterior node fairly _burned_, so hot with charge that just looking at it was painful. As Rung shoved two fingers inside of himself, he dropped forward on Megatron's chassis, holding himself up with the arm still clutching bare and stripped components.

"Don't touch me," Rung whispered. "I'm not yours."

* * *

Epilogue: Escape Routes

After the announcement, Starscream removed himself from bridge duty, cut his coms, and made his way down into the bowels of the ship where only the foolhardy bordering on suicidal would dare follow him.

In the past Megatron hadn't been above making the oblique threat while he held Rung sleeping in his arms. The three of them dirty and spent, Megatron's fingers moving tender over the fine components of Rung's little neck, and Megatron's merciless hint of a smile as he said, "I can take him away from you at any time. Never forget that."

One more piece of leverage. One more turn of the screw. But that was supposed to be a hostage negotiation–the promise a few years at separate posts until Starscream was sufficiently softened up, appropriately apologetic, willing to come bend his stubborn knee at the foot of the throne again. It wasn't supposed to be this.

Worst, that it didn't have anything to do with Starscream, now that it had happened. He'd been on his best behavior for nearly a vorn now. He'd been sycophantic, almost, purring close and telling Megatron anything he wanted to hear, waiting for the inevitable

When Rung had first disappeared, Starscream had gone to Megatron and let himself be fragged into the conference table, wings crumpling the maps in stacks beneath him, teeth digging into his lip as he tried to be triumphant. See what you missed Rung? I don't need you. I'm just fine here, without you, and it'll be you who's sorry once you come crawling back.

It was good. He meant, it was fine. He could take a little rough handling. With the way Megatron had torn Rung's room apart, ripping up the bolted furniture like so much shredded hard copy, Starscream knew he could be rougher. So it was. Fine.

And then when Rung came back, Starscream could flaunt how he'd been so busy, really, he hadn't even had time to miss Rung. Oh, did you go somewhere? I didn't notice.

It wouldn't be long. Sure, he'd been talking about leaving since the night Starscream met him, but that was just what he thought he wanted. He'd cool his heels for a while, somewhere, maybe on a little resort planet somewhere on the other side of the galaxy, and run his little engine hot for a while, get some space. But sooner or later he'd realize that everything he'd worked for was back on the Nemesis, and then he'd come back home.

Nobody really left the Decepticons. You couldn't. There was nowhere for you to go.

And then….. The announcement.

The first thing that gave Starscream pause was the sight of Tarn stomping through the hallways of the nemesis, like a dust devil ripping lightning and ruin over the Rust Sea. Starscream, himself, had been in a black mood, licking his wounds in the laboratory and soldering together a double barreled monstrosity that would take even Megatron's helm off given half the chance.

He'd been awake for three shift cycles, but he couldn't defrag like this. His quarters would only be a cell block for him. And Rung's room–just the sight of all the models shattered on the floor, the berth gathering dust–

Megatron had removed the door from the laboratory after the last time Starscream made something that turned out to be a weapon meant for someone decidedly not Megatron. Arming nascent coups and would be traitors was apparently an infraction that required the loss of privacy privileges. So Starscream just flooded the corridor with enough slag-melting exhaust to make any nosey glitches steer clear.

Tarn had passed in front of his lab, which was somewhat remarkable in itself. His heavy footsteps pounded against the floor; his shoulders were hunched, his battle systems were whining with the telltale effort of trying to offline. In the split second that Starscream looked up, pushing his hazard goggles up his helm, Tarn has looked through the doorway and fixed him with a gaze so malevolent, so molten, that it could have melted the components of a genericon. Then he'd lurched forward, and disappeared out of view, the fragging crankshaft.

Despite his best efforts, Starscream's processor wouldn't turn off. The squeals of metal grinding metal couldn't even deafen out the running loops–no amount of scorched fingers of singed vents could break the grip of clawing, furious dread in his sublevels. He'd stood there, measuring lengths of coil, and all the while his blasted processor had begun to say, why is Tarn throwing such a glitch fit?

And he had fed copper wire into duct after duct, as his processor said to him, Tarn just got to rip the spark out of the only mech in the galaxy he hates more than me. Why does he look like Megatron just refused to spit in his mouth?

Despite himself, Starscream bared his fangs at the work table. "Not tonight sweetie," he giggled, "I'm tired."

He reached for the soldering iron.

Tarn's had a hate-on for Rung since before Megatron even brought the DJD together. Spark, strike, seal.

It's barely been days since Megatron announced the termination. Spark, strike, seal.

Tarn would have come in his panels at the mere thought of finally getting his hands on Megatron's pet moderate. Spark, strike, seal.

You saw Tarn before the announcement too, didn't you? Wasn't he just as unpleasant then as he was just now?

The second barrel slotted into the completed gun with a firm sharp click. But Starscream wasn't even looking at the gun. He was looking at the doorway, and past that, into a cold and merciless universe, a dark and pitiless galaxy.

"He's not dead," Starscream said, and knew that it was true.


End file.
